Though parent company Warner Bros. announced earlier this week that it would cut 800 jobs, DC Comics was expected to remain largely unaffected, given its historical autonomy within the vast Warner media empire. The letting go of Schreck indicates that is not so, and that layoffs will likely affect every division of the corporation.

The loss of Bob Schreck is particularly surprising, given the editor’s superlative standing in the industry. In the 1990s, Schreck nurtured some of Dark Horse’s most revered classics with “Sin City,” “Madman” and “Dark Horse Presents.” He later brought popular filmmaker Kevin Smith’s Jay & Silent Bob characters to comics at Oni Press, a venture he co-founded with Joe Nozemack before moving to DC to revitalize the company’s then-lackluster Batman line, recruiting Greg Rucka to write “Detective” and Frank Miller to create “The Dark Knight Strikes Again.” Schreck went on to edit “All Star Superman” and “All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder,” two of DC’s biggest successes in recent years.